Chapter 63. The tribe

After instant transmitting to his little mate, Vegeta found himself in the darkened and oppressively hot interior of a white bell tent. The floor was covered with simply woven brown rugs, the middle of the tent occupied by a low round table surrounded by cushions to sit on. The pallet at the back of the tent was where his little mate lay snoozing with the usual hint of drool trickling from her parted lips. As always, she lay curled up on her side, one arm cradling the moon old swell of her pregnant belly. She was carrying another daughter and this babe was building power at the same mad rate as her sister Aina had done.

Being out in the suns had given Akane a very deep tan. Like she predicted, a smatter of freckles now saddled her small nose. Her wild hair was drawn up in elaborate braids with fragments of coloured bone tied into it. She had also exchanged her usual gear for tribal clothing, wearing a painted leather vest with her breasts, that looked to have become heavier again, beneath bare and her skin decorated with red and blue body paint. Her loins and arse were covered by a barely sufficient piece of leather cloth that was fastened low on her hips and left her thighs naked. The fabric had slipped to the side to make her arse peep out. What splendour. Her feet were bare, the soles painted red, her ankles adorned with slender golden hoops. She looked fiercer and hotter than ever.

Aina had learned to sit up in the time Vegeta spent away from them. She was seated next to her mother's head on the pallet naked but for her own piece of cloth, happily waving the tip of her fluffy tail about while developing her fine motor skills by pinching the tassels of a cushion with her tiny fingertips. Aina looked moderately tanned herself, especially considering how pale she had been when Vegeta last saw her. Her flaming red hair had become a stunning strawberry blonde. It was evident that his daughter belonged in the glare of the suns as much as her mother did.

Vegeta could hear the din of the village outside the bell tent. He sensed Ringo on guard outside and wondered how the Westerner was coping with this insane Southern heat. Vegeta found it a challenge to adjust even inside the shadowy interior of the tent. He stripped off his brigandine and gloves to give himself some air. The movement made his little mate stir. She sat up and looked at him, her eyes now standing out so yellow in her tanned face that they seemed lit. Her scars looked nearly white in contrast to her skin, making them very pronounced and very appealing.

"Blood, it is mafting out here." Vegeta swore.

"So lose the gear." Akane said with a very sultry smile. "You should go show off your handsome chopper. Just stand at the mouth of the tent for a while. The tribe will throw a feast in honour of its size."

"I'm not showing off my cock." Vegeta dismissed her. "You look very fierce, little one."

"I had a gravidation ceremony." Akane explained, flipping open her vest to show the red and blue streaks of paint following the curves of her breasts and belly. "I'm afraid it didn't help turn this one into a son." she joked.

"I will give you a son next time." Vegeta simply said. "You are thriving splendidly."

Akane ignored that. "Did you see Aina's hair?" She ruffled the kitten's hair affectionately and rough enough for Aina to topple over and roll off the pallet with a giggle.

Vegeta smiled at the sound. "It's beautiful."

"Kack!" Aina quipped as she popped into sight from behind the pallet.

"Honestly." Vegeta huffed, throwing the kitten and her mother both a disapproving look.

Akane let out her roughest laugh. "It wasn't me. There's a lot of that being thrown around in this village."

"My father is going to love that." Vegeta said sarcastically.

"I tried for ugly, but it wouldn't stick." Akane ribbed. She passed a look over the lazy lob down his spandex that had long since been brought on by the sight of her lush body. "I see you're fed up with solitude."

"I'm not." Vegeta said and he wasn't, though he was of a mind to make his break from it a longer one than he planned now that he had laid eyes on his voluptuous Queen. Even so he said: "I'm only here to test the technique you wished for me."

"Surely not only for that." Akane made a supple dash off of the palet and slipped her arms around his waist when she reached him. "That's a nice tail you have there."

Vegeta moved in to press his lips to hers, taking her by the wrists just as she made a grab for his tail. He pulled them around his neck and pinned them down there, snaking the apendage loosely around her thigh. Even if he had wasted no time in desensitizing it, having her laying hands on it with Aina around probably wasn't the best idea. He was aroused enough as it was.

"You should stay a while." Akane whispered in her sexy grating voice. "I have something to show you and it is going to blow your mind."

Vegeta was distracted by another giggle coming from the palet. Their daughter had obviously gone mobile as she balled herself up in a knot of chubby limbs and came rolling over through the tent, splaying herself out at their feet. It looked so ridiculous that it worked on his laugh muscles.

"Yeah, she does that." Akane snickered.

Laughing, Vegeta stooped to pick Aina up. He sat her on his lower arm to examine her more thoroughly. She had put on quite some weight and several inches, her previously toothless mouth now filled with little white chompers. Unlike with his son and elder daughter, Aina was growing in spurts like all Saiyajins. She had evidently just been through one.

Aina threw out another cheerful: "Kack!" and slapped him in the face in greeting.

"You have both gotten nice and fat out here." Vegeta concluded contentedly as he nuzzled his daughter's cheek.

"She's on solids." Akane said. She passed him, making for the mouth of the tent and gesturing him to follow. "I found a new dry nurse too. This one can actually handle her. I swear that woman has some kind of kitten magic."

She made to pull open the tent flap, but Vegeta seized her by the painted vest with his free hand to drag her back. "Those are mine again." he said rearanging the leather so that her breasts were covered up.

There was a hint of her foul temper rearing in those hellish eyes, yet she sounded mellowed when she said: "They see nothing but tits here all day, ugly. Mine really are nothing special to them."

She threw the tent flap open and they stepped out into the relentless glare of the two red suns together.

Ringo was standing next to the entrance in the shade of a white awning jutting out from the side of the bell tent. He was clad in his Royal Guardsman's attire, but had removed the spandex shirt from beneath his armour so that his arms and flanks were bare. His normally pale skin was baked a sandy brown like Aina's and the sweat was pouring down the bald sides of his head. His tall mohawk had a rather unhappy droop to it. As uncomfortable as he looked, it did not look to have any affect on his vigilance.

"My King." he saluted.

"You look mafted. You should have followed her example." Vegeta said jerking his head in his scantly clad mate's direction.

Ringo grinned and said sarcastically: "It's not so bad if you reduce yourself to the act of breathing."

Vegeta snickered.

"He is way too proud of that uniform." Akane interjected impatiently. "I'm taking Aina to Suzuna for a while, Ringo. Are you ready to have the sweat pissing down your crack again?"

"Can't wait." Ringo joked.

The three of them, and Vegeta with a very industrious Aina hopping up and down on his arm, picked their way through the vast variety of white tents that surrounded the centre of the sprawling main village of the Shield Smasher tribe. There was a lot of activity despite the oppressive heat. Children were running around bare arsed and covered in dried mud and all the tribes men and women milling about were as scantly clad, if not more so than his little mate.

"See, my King? Tits abound." Akane joked, spinning around and throwing her arms wide to indicate the whole village.

The gesture made her own painted breasts pop into view for a spell and knowing his little mate it wasn't half as inadvertently as she wanted him to think it was.

Vegeta ground his teeth and ordered through their link: 'Leave off, Akane. You're getting on my nerves.'

Apparently he sounded dire enough for her to turn away from pushing his buttons some more. She even went so far as to cover herself up by cinching the vest snugly around her small waist with the hempen ropes that were previously dangling at her sides. Some strange calm was over his otherwise obnoxious mate. You could almost call her agreeable. Perhaps she had missed him more than she led on.

They left the centre with its cooking fires behind and headed for the outskirts of the village under scrutiny of the tribes people. There was nothing agreeable about the too bold looks thrown their way, but the salutes they were given were respectful enough. There was little chance of him encountering anyone who felt impelled to grovel for him down here in the South.

"What are they doing?" Vegeta asked as his eye fell on a large excavation site where men and women were hoisting up and carrying away buckets of dry soil.

"They're settling." Akane said proudly. "With the tribes united, there's no more need for them to be able to pack up and leave at a moment's notice. My kinsmen set something huge in motion here."

"What about the other tribes?" Vegeta asked astonished. The Southerners had been a nomadic people since the earliest recountings. Them giving up on their old ways was huge indeed.

"Settling as well." Akane focussed on Ringo at her other shoulder. "Is Turles with the Tall Hands?"

Ringo nodded.

They made for a ring of low canvas tents that stood sticking out from the edge of the village as if it had been added at random. It was out of place in looks as well, the material and make of the tents different from those inside the village. The brown canvas dwellings formed a half circle around a huge, raging fire that added to the insane Southern heat. A massive boar was roasting on a spit suspended above it, the embers underneath sizzling as fat dripped off the crackling meat into the fire. The smell made Vegeta's mouth water.

Turles was leisuring in front of the biggest of the low roofed, brown tents. Unlike Ringo, he had ditched his gear for a loincloth and he had built up such a tan that he was nearly unrecognisable.

"Is he still here?" Vegeta asked sharply when his eyes fell on Bardock sitting back propped up on his elbows next to his son, his bronzed, muscled legs thrown wide and his balls all but hanging out from under the loincloth he too was wearing. "You told me he left."

"He did." Akane said with a snort of laughter. "And then he came back."

It somewhat placated Vegeta that she didn't give the Warrior Chief more acknowledgement than a passing look, which the man answered with a broad, suggestive grin that made the knotted thing inside Vegeta come alive nonetheless.

"My King." Bardock greeted nonchalantly. "My Queen."

"Let's go, Turles!" Akane hollered.

She grabbed Vegeta by the wrist in an attempt to pull him along before he did more than throw a murderous glare at the presumptuous Warrior Chief. Vegeta refused to move. The look he shot his little mate made her back off and hold her tongue immediately.

"It's a shame your battle power is such a joke, tribes man." Vegeta said with his usual calm. "It's not worth the steam off my piss. You would do well to keep the bleeding smiles to yourself from now on."

Bardock was more satisfied with that than anything else because he gave an appreciative chuckle and averted his gaze. He might be too bold for his own good, the Warrior Chief wasn't a stupid man. It had taken him less than a second to assess that Vegeta wasn't making empty threats.

Turles joined them looking mortified. He was scratching the back of his head so furiously it was a wonder he still had hair on it when he finally eased up on himself.

"You should just have his head and be done with it, my King." a tall, well proportioned, bronze skinned woman said as she walked up to them. She had an expression on her handsome face so aggressive that it made even his savage little mate look innocent.

"I should." Vegeta agreed.

"He helped unite the tribes, surely he has earned some credit with that." Akane said. "This is Bardock's mate, Dolgoon." she introduced.

The tribes woman was busy staring daggers at Bardock. The Warrior Chief answered with a look of enthralled worship that convinced Vegeta the man should be allowed to live another day after all. It instantly reminded him of his own affliction.

"How about a nooner, love?" Bardock boomed at his mate.

Dolgoon declined by flipping him the wank off. She turned her attention to Akane and threw her a malignant smile. His little mate wasted no time in conjuring up one of her own. Even so, the two women huddled together amicably enough and started talking in hushed and rather similar grating voices.

"You take one seed every morn." Dolgoon instructed, handing Akane a small cloth pouch with a leather cord attached to it.

"Do I just pop it?" Akane asked while slipping the pouch around her neck.

"You have to boil it in water first and drink the extract." Dolgoon said. She chortled. "It's minging as kack, but it will help."

And Aina on Vegeta's arm echoed, much to his displeasure: "Kack!"

"Cheers." Akane said.

Dolgoon waved her thanks away. She rolled her eyes after another look at Bardock and muttered an exasperated: "That cuntox." Then she bid them farewell and made her way over to her mate. She greeted him with a punch to the chest that had the Warrior Chief fall over with laughter.

"Why so cold?" Bardock hollered as Dolgoon disappeared into the tent at his back. He dashed in after her quick as water.

Vegeta was suddenly struck by the notion of prudish Kakarot struggling to deal with his obscene father. He couldn't hold back a snicker. His little mate picked up on his thought and started laughing as well.

'Just for that, he gets to live.'

'You're an evil tyrant.' Akane sent back.

She took Aina from him and deposited her in Ringo's arms with instructions to take her to the dry nurse. The two Royal Guardsmen saluted and left the ring of tents. Ringo could be heard sending Turles up about his father. Turles cursed his comrade out vehemently in return while Aina hurled combative kacks at the both of them, quickly dashing any hopes Vegeta had left of his daughter not inheriting her mother's foul mouth.